Ireland to investigate adoptions, baby deaths at church homes

DUBLIN (Reuters) - The Irish government has ordered a
comprehensive investigation into the treatment of children at
Catholic church homes for unmarried mothers, including
accusations of forced adoptions and unusually high mortality
rates among children housed there.

Dublin has come under increasing pressure to examine
practices at the institutions used to house children born out of
wedlock between the 1920s and 1960s following the discovery of
an unmarked grave with the remains of hundreds of babies near
Galway.

"It is not an exaggeration to say the treatment of the women
and their babies was an abomination," Prime Minister Enda Kenny,
a practicing Catholic, told parliament. "If this issue isn't
handled properly, then Ireland's soul in many ways will lie like
the babies of so many of these mothers in an unmarked grave."

The Oscar-nominated film Philomena, which dealt with forced
adoption of a child from a mother at one of the homes, also
helped bring the issue to international attention.

The Roman Catholic Church dominated Ireland until the 1980s
when a series of sex abuse scandals began to undermine its
authority, but it still runs many schools and hospitals.

Minister for Children Charlie Flanagan told journalists the
government had decided to establish a commission of
investigation with full statutory powers to investigate
"mother-and-baby homes" throughout the country.

Terms of the inquiry have not yet been established, but he
said he hoped it would deal with high mortality rates, burial
practices, adoption procedures and testing of medicine on
children at the homes, and would seek church records.

"I am delighted that (the church) have indicated their
willingness to cooperate with the process...so we can establish
once and for all the facts of what went on during what was a
very dark period of Irish history," he told state broadcaster
RTE.

Government records show that throughout the 1930s, 40s and
50s, the mortality rate for children born out of wedlock in
Ireland was often more than five times that of children born to
married parents.

Until the 1980s, many unwed Irish mothers were compelled to
give up their babies to secret adoptions.

Support groups for the survivors of the homes welcomed the
news. "Certainly on the face of it, it is looking good," said
Susan Lohan, director of the Adoption Rights Alliance, which has
been calling for a similar inquiry for decades.

"The timeliness and the scope are the most important things
here. We mustn't allow it to be dragged out."